Une bouche de bois. Futsukayoi. Una Resaca. Ein Kater. Una notte da leoni. A hangover. No matter how you say it, hangovers hurt, literally and psychologically. Your body is in pain due to dehydration and the toxic affects of alcohol, and your brain is asking: “Aren’t we too old for this?”
Whether you have a mild headache and dry mouth or your whole body is pounding in pain as the room spins and spins, humans have been getting over hangovers all over the world for centuries upon centuries.
Try the following hangover remedies from around the world so that your day after drinking doesn’t have to be a complete waste.
- Drink oregano tea to sooth a hangover and settle your stomach in Ecuador.
- In Turkey the preferred hangover cure and preventative is to eat the lining of a cow’s stomach in the form of tripe soup. Boil the offal and combine with generous amounts of cream and garlic, then eat before and after your night on the town.
- Menudo is the hangover cure in Mexico, another form of tripe soup, served spicy with onions, garlic, chiles, oregano and cumin.
- To sooth a pounding head in Germany, eat a pickled herring wrapped around an onion or a pickle, aka rollmops. Bavarian pretzels and white sausage can also do the trick, all washed down with a fresh German beer, of course.
- In Poland they skip the pickle and go right to the source. Drink a glass of vinegary picklejuice or in a pinch, sip from the sauerkraut.
- You can’t go far in Canada without encountering poutine, a fatty, French-fried breakfast whose grease will slow the absorption of alcohol into your system. Take one batch of thick, well-cooked French fries and drown them in gravy and cheese curds. Drink with Canada Dry ginger ale to balance out the fat with sugar and further settle your stomach with the ginger.
- Try a helping of umeboshi or pickled sour plums in Japan, where the small tart fruits are believed to help digestion, improve liver function and prevent nausea. Perfect after those nights of too much sake.
- In Namibia they drink buffalo milk for a hangover – and no, you don’t have to drag your ass out to a pasture to actually milk the hulking beasts. Buffalo milk is a strong concoction that is a bit like a booze milkshake. Combine vanilla ice cream, dark rum, spiced rum, cream liqueur (like Bailey’s) and heavy cream. Blend well, sit back, relax and enjoy.
- For a hangover in Russia, skip the sweets and head right into the sauna to sweat the toxins out. Follow the sauna with a good beating by birch leaves and then eat a raw egg. You’ll be good as new!
- If the Russian remedy is too tame for you, try the favorite hangover cure in Mongolia, and pop into your mouth a pickled sheep’s eyeball soaked in tomato juice. Boiled sheep eyeballs also work well if you are running low on pickled ones.
- In Puerto Rico, people pre-empt their hangovers by rubbing lemon juice under the arm that they drink with.
- The traditional hangover remedy in SouthKorea is haejangguk, a stout soup that soothes the stomach and is made with cow bones or pork spine, cabbage, vegetables and coagulated ox blood. Find it sold on the streets every weekend morning.
- Sooth your hangover like they do in Haiti with voodoo. Just stick 13 pins into the cork of the bottle that did you wrong, and your hangover will fade away.
- In Australia the hangover cure of choice is Berocca, an over-the-counter tablet and nutritional supplement that delivers a big dose of B and C vitamins. Just plop one into a glass of water, and drink after it has been dissolved. Combine with a slice of Vegemite-covered toast and you will be ready for round two!
- Scotland’s favorite beverage after whisky is Irn Bru, a bright orange hangover remedy with a citrus taste that has been one of the best-selling drinks in Scotland since 1901!
- In Italy, the cure for hangovers and everything else is to drink several cups of strong, homemade espresso. Skip the milk and sugar and act like the grown-up you are.
- Perhaps China has the most sensible hangover remedy of all: Strong green tea with a big squirt of lemon juice for vitamin C.
image: ausnahmezustand